CK One and a walking stick: Nelson Mandela's 'human side' on show in new exhibition in Johannesburg

A weather-beaten walking stick, an empty bottle of Calvin Klein One and a fragment from the rudimentary hut Nelson Mandela was born in are among the personal artefacts of the former South African president that will go on public display this month in Johannesburg

Visitors look at some of the items on display at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Photo: ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Mr Mandela's archive is to be opened to the public, along with the office where he worked for the last years of his professional life, at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory – a stone's throw from the home in the upmarket suburb of Houghton where the 95-year-old is now convalescing.

Mr Mandela returned home in September from a three-month stay in hospital where he was treated for a recurring lung infection.

On Monday, President Jacob Zuma said in a word-for-word repeat of previous statements he has issued to update South Africans on Mr Mandela's failing health that he remained in a "stable but critical" condition.

"Madiba continues to respond to treatment," he added, referring to Mr Mandela by his clan name.

Mr Mandela's former wife Winnie told a local newspaper on Sunday that he was unable to speak because of the tubes in his mouth helping him to breathe, and was instead using facial expressions to communicate. "He remains quite ill," she said.

The Permanent Exhibition on the Life and Times of Nelson Mandela is the latest in a series of Mandela museums to be opened across South Africa in honour of its most adored public figure. There is one in Mthatha, the city nearest to Mr Mandela's birthplace of Mvezo, in the rural Eastern Cape; another in the nearby village of Qunu where he grew up; and a permanent exhibition about South Africa's first black, democratically-elected president at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

The museum at Robben Island, the Cape penal colony where Mr Mandela spent 18 of his 27 year in prison, also stands as a monument to what he overcame to bring his country together.

But while all cover the key chapters in Mr Mandela's life, from his upbringing within a tribal royal family to his time as a lawyer and anti-apartheid activist in Johannesburg, his prison years and his eventual release to become president, the latest offering of Mandela memorabilia is the most personal yet.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a former anti-apartheid activist and now opposition party leader who sits on the Mandela Foundation board, said the exhibition melded Mandela's human side with his more public face.

"I think what we can learn from this is how the man and the leader, the father, the citizen and the global citizen all come together with the vulnerability and strength he had and we all have within us," she said.

It includes letters he produced in minute handwriting from prison to be smuggled out to family and friends, full notepads that were confiscated by a prison officer who returned them a decade later and a knobkerrie – a traditional wooden weapon he used as a walking stick. Speakers overhead play passages of Mr Mandela's treacle-laden voice describing key moments in his life, and television screens play footage of rare interviews he gave.

Glass cases contain some of the magazines that featured on their covers the man previously known as a terrorist, including Time, Forbes and Le Nouvel Observateur.

In the centre of the room stands a glass-walled cubicle in the exact dimensions of his prison cell on Robben Island containing a desk calendar and the books he read while incarcerated, including a New Testament and biographies of William Gladstone, the British Prime Minister, Abraham Lincoln, the US president and former South African statesman Jan Smuts.

In Mr Mandela's private office, which he used from 2002 to his retirement in 2010, there are more books and large, framed pictures of him with his old allies including Oliver Tambo, the former ANC secretary-general and Oliver Tambo, the ANC's president, as well as his meeting with Barack Obama in 2005 when the now US president was a senator.

On one shelf sit signed boxing gloves and a cricket bat, along with an old-fashioned British bobby's hat complete with silver "ER" badge. Just outside is a box with piles of white towels, a bottle of the unisex fragrance CK One and a tub of Vaseline "Skin Food" body lotion. They are labelled: "Personal effects from Nelson Mandela's office bathroom."

Sello Hatang, head of the Nelson Mandela Foundation which oversees his archive, said the opening of Mr Mandela's archive to visitors from all over the world had been his express desire.

"Because Madiba is a global icon, we must reach a global audience with his work," he said.

The opening also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the approval of an interim constitution and an electoral bill that set the stage for South Africa's first multiracial elections in 1994.